The Englishwoman in America

Isabella Bird, born 1831, was in her twenties when she made a journey to Canada and the US _ this was her first journey to recuperate frompoor health (!), and she kept on travelling into her seventies. The travel diary is not only interesting in respect to the country in the 1850s, but also are her observations, often witty and with dry humor, as one would not expect from a 20 year old girl in those times.

The book offers the perspective of North America from--just what the titles says--an Englishwoman, and her observations are very interesting with its comparisons to her own Britain as well as revealing of her own background and class consciousness. After a while, it did become rather wearisome with her parallels between the two countries and moralizing. It was written in the 1850s, but offers a glimpse into a time and place.